Collaboration systems integrate work on one or more projects by several concurrent users at separate workstations. Examples of collaboration systems include groupware products such as Microsoft® Outlook® and Lotus® Notes®, which among other things, handle e-mail, tasks, and scheduling. More elaborate collaboration systems such as SAP® Business One supplement groupware with integrated management capabilities, such as financial management, customer relationship management, and sales management capabilities that provide access to real-time information.
Existing collaboration systems support a variety of business processes. An example of a business process supported on some collaboration systems is a workflow. A workflow routes tasks to groups of users, rather than a single individual. Workflows automate business processes by integrating tasks across departments, applications, and system boundaries. A workflow maps individual tasks needed to complete the workflow to users/groups, automatically informing users/groups of user of their role in the workflow and providing them with whatever information is required for the task. Steps which do not require user intervention may be carried out automatically.
Collaboration systems include subroutines to process user responses, and may include scheduling escalation procedures (e.g., adjust due dates; send reminders to a recipient to take action; reassign tasks) to assure that the workflow is completed in a timely manner. The workflow process creates a precise audit trail and can provide powerful analysis reporting to allow future optimization of the process.
A basic concept behind workflows is the idea of the “business scenarios” in which particular events or activities are anticipated to occur during the normal course of business. When a process needed to support such events/activities can be mapped out into a series of discrete, assignable tasks, a workflow can be created to support the process. An example of a business scenario in the banking context would be the handling of a loan request. Based on conventional business practice, a series of steps and particular information is needed in order to evaluate the request. These steps, who should complete them, and what information is needed can be mapped into a workflow, allowing the collaboration system to guide the loan request from receipt to decision with minimal human intervention.
The information-core of a workflow is a business object. A business object is a software abstraction that represents an entity in the real business world. For example, a business object can represent a business transactions such as a purchase order, a contract, a policy, or a loan. Each business object has elements that can be modeled to capture business data.
The inner structure of a business object is ordinarily concealed from a user. A business object may comprise persistent data (e.g., data tied to a database) and embedded business logic. The business logic is composed of machine-executable instructions which govern the behavior and properties of the object, including how the data is organized for presentation and the inter-relationship of data. Properties of the object may represent the attributes of the entity in the real business world, providing business “meaning” behind object data. For example, a Sales Order object can have properties like order number, order date, and quantity. The business logic may also include machine-executable instructions for performing specific operations such as the manipulation and validation of data. For example, the Sales Order object can include an embedded method to calculate and get the line-items total.
Many business software application users (e.g., purchasers) manage a large quantity of business documents. In many cases documents must be processed and completed step-by-step or must be postponed for some clarification, but completed on-time. This requires that the responsible person keep track of their work, and not forget to continue with documents that require revisiting for clarification.
Existing collaboration system solutions include setting a reminder for a document/workflow task recipient, either via a subroutine in the collaboration system, or via a groupware tool such as setting a task or calendar reminder in Microsoft Outlook. However, absent setting up a groupware task or calendar reminder, current solutions lack any provision for reminding the sender responsible for initiating (or forwarding the business object as a step in) the workflow.